Merlin

Stobo Kirk: Merlin is said to have been baptised
nearby

Merlin, also known as Myrddin Wyllt, Merlin Caledonensis, or Merlin
Sylvestrus lived from about 540 to August 584. He is a figure from Welsh legend
who served as a bard before ending his days as a madman, prophet and mystic in
the forests of Tweeddale in the
Scottish Borders. The
wider picture in Scotland at the time is set out in our
Historical Timeline.

Merlin is, of course, best known from his role in the Arthurian
Legends. These started with Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae or "History of the Kings of
Britain", completed in 1138. They have since taken such a hold on popular
imagination that separating the fragments of history from the many layers of
legend is no easy task. What seems clear, however, is that
King Arthur's Merlin as described by Geoffrey of
Monmouth was a combination of two separate historical characters. One was our
Myrddin Wyllt, and the second was Ambrosius Aurelianus, a war leader of the
Romano-British who won an important battle against the Anglo-Saxons in the
400s. The result of this merger was the wizard "Merlin Ambrosius".

The real Merlin, Myrddin Wyllt, was born in about 540 and had a twin
sister called Gwendydd. He served as a bard to Gwenddoleu ap Ceidio, a
Brythonic or British king who ruled Arfderydd, a kingdom including parts of
what are now Scotland and England in the area around
Carlisle. Gwenddoleu was
killed in the Battle of Arfderydd, near modern
Longtown, in 573 during a
defeat by King Rhydderch Hael of Strathclyde. An alternative legend places the
death of Gwenddoleu at the Battle of Arderyth, or the Battle of
Airdrie, in 577. In this version
Merlin was awarded a golden torc for his recording of the battle, possibly by
King Rhydderch Hael, and he then spent time at the king's fortress at
Dumbarton Castle. It
is said that Merlin subsequently went mad, retreating to live as a prophet and
recluse in the forests of Tweeddale.

In August 584 Merlin, later also referred to as Lailoken, is said to
have encountered St Mungo or
St Kentigern near the site of what is now
Stobo Kirk. The result was
Merlin's conversion to Christianity by Kentigern.
According to a later chronicler, Kentigern was
told by Merlin that he had foreseen his own death by falling, stabbing, and
drowning. Late on the day of his conversion Merlin was chased by a group of
shepherds and as a result fell off a cliff into a river, where he was impaled
on a stake securing a fisherman's net and drowned. Merlin is believed to have
been buried beside a thorn tree at Drumelzier, near the River Tweed and close
to a tiny settlement called Merlindale. There is no record of his ever meeting
the best Scottish candidate for the basis of the legend of
King Arthur, Artuir mac Áedáin,
but the two were contemporaries.

One of the oddities of this and other stories from south west
Scotland is why they should have been preserved in Welsh rather than Scottish
folklore. The answer is that the British Kingdom of Strathclyde was much more
aligned, both culturally and linguistically, with Wales than with any part of
modern Scotland. The Kingdom of Strathclyde was extinguished almost without
trace five centuries after the era we are talking about here, and the theory is
that as Brythonic or British culture contracted back towards its Welsh
heartland it took with it the folklore of Strathclyde.